


Secrets of the marriage bed

by Deputychairman



Category: Getting Married In Buffalo Jump (1990)
Genre: F/M, First Time, Romance, Wedding Night
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-22
Updated: 2014-03-22
Packaged: 2018-01-16 12:51:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1348090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deputychairman/pseuds/Deputychairman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alex’s hair is curling damp over his forehead and she smoothes it back between kisses. He opens his eyes, and for a moment they just gaze at each other across an inch of new sheets, their marriage bed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Secrets of the marriage bed

 

 

Sophie has had seven lovers before Alex.

She lost her virginity to a guy in college and was glad to have it over with. She couldn’t honestly see what the fuss was about: she was fond enough of him, but the sex itself – well, maybe they both needed practice. Otherwise why would people bother?

 

She thought she was in love with the second guy. He was a philosophy major who gazed into her eyes and kissed her neck tenderly, and one day she walked in to the student lounge to find him making out with a blonde girl in a pink sweater who she’d never set eyes on before.

It was a surprise to find how little it hurt, and as she got drunk with Eleanor she decided that it hadn’t been love after all. Eleanor agreed. Eleanor was a good friend like that.

 

The third was a one-night stand. Sophie and Eleanor discussed it the next day in the kind of detail you only share when you’re 21, and agreed that a woman had just as much right to have casual sex as men did, and that it didn’t make her a slut. Which she still believed, she absolutely did believe that, but it didn’t change the fact that the guy seemed to have more fun for less effort and less risk that Sophie did.

 

The fourth was a hideous mistake.

 

The fifth lasted two years.

It was fine. Not earth-shattering, but nice. Then he graduated, got a job in Vancouver, and that was that.

 

The sixth was earth-shattering in all the wrong ways. At least it had the virtue of all being over quickly.

 

The seventh was a shit, but Sophie didn’t notice at first.

He was fun, and the sex was good. She got why people did it now. But he wasn’t so much fun after that night she called Eleanor, just to make sure she was ok, and Eleanor really wasn’t ok. She really really wasn’t, and Sophie could tell.

He sulked when she left dinner on the table and went over to Eleanor’s. He carried on sulking every time she couldn’t meet him, with pointed remarks about where her priorities lay.

Eleanor said later that Sophie saved her life, and that was probably an exaggeration. All the same, there was no contest. Sophie wouldn’t have chosen between them, but if he was _making_ her choose –

She never really understood what his problem was. He moved out one weekend, taking half of her record collection and hissing vicious things she chose not to respond to and did her best to forget afterwards. She cleaned the whole place before work on Saturday night – she even vacuumed behind the couch, and found that necklace she thought she’d lost – and threw out everything he’d forgotten. Eleanor moved in on Sunday afternoon.

The two of them met plenty of guys after that. Sophie sent some of Eleanor’s bad choices packing and heard all about the ok choices in the morning. Eleanor never did change much from when they were 21 in that respect, but Sophie kind of liked it. It was nice to know Eleanor trusted her.

Sophie didn’t meet anyone she liked enough to bother with the whole time Eleanor was staying, or for six months after she got her own place, and then the next time she went home her dad was sick.

Really sick, and then dying.

Sophie realised that she wasn’t going back to the city; and that she wasn’t going to play piano in bars any more; and that she was lonely; and that it was worth it. This was where she wanted to be.

 

**

 

She hasn’t asked Alex how many lovers he’s had. He hasn’t asked her either.

It isn’t like it’s a secret, or she’s ashamed of anything, because she isn’t. In Alex’s place, she thinks she’d like to know that she never got around to sleeping with Robert Markovietch. She’ll tell him, if it ever comes up, but she likes that he hasn’t asked. Robert’s right there around town. Everyone knows they went out some, and Alex hasn’t asked.

Sophie knows about Annie, obviously. More from Annie herself than from Alex, but that’s ok. She trusts Annie’s version; Annie’s her friend. She knows what she needs to. The detail isn’t her business.

 

After Annie, she has no idea. There’s a 10 year gap.

Everyone says that guys on rigs go with whores, so maybe Alex did too, when he was working the rig. If he did, she doesn’t want to know about it. Maybe everybody does it, but it’s one of those things she just can’t make sit right in her heart. So she doesn’t ask. She’s pretty sure he didn’t, but she doesn’t ask.

 

He’s been back in Buffalo Jump for five years and doesn’t seem to have dated anyone in town. A place like this, someone would have told her even if Alex hadn’t. But there’s no gossip, no rumours, nothing. Maybe that means he was discreet; maybe it means there wasn’t anybody.

Sophie wants to know, but she isn’t going to ask. He doesn’t have to account for everything he did, any more than she does.

 

**

 

On their wedding day, Alex has condoms.

Not that Sophie hasn’t thought about birth control – they agreed they wanted kids, but they don’t want them right this minute. She’s started taking the Pill, they don’t _need_ condoms, exactly.

But he’s right. They don’t know everything about each other. She’s touched that he thought of it, along with the cabin and the bed and the curtains in the window, even.

 

It’s a huge box of condoms too, which he hasn’t opened and can’t get the cellophane off once they’re making out and mostly undressed and he’s spread out under her, breathing hard. Sophie raises her eyebrows at him.

“Are these all for _today_?”

He gives up with his fingernails and grins up at her as he tears the box open with his teeth.

“I wasn’t waiting because I didn’t _wanna_ do it.”

“What, you were afraid I wasn’t going to respect you in the morning?”

He’s looking up at her and pauses just for a second.

“Something like that,” he says.

Then the box gives up in the face of his determination, and little foil packages scatter all over his chest. He brushes them off and in the quiet of the fields she can hear the different sounds they make when they land on the sheets and on the floor.

Sophie lifts up to let him wriggle out of his underwear and then he’s naked and hard and just _beautiful_ beneath her.

 

He uses his teeth to open the foil too, but carefully. Whatever he’s done with whoever he’s done it with, he knows you don’t tear what’s inside if you want to get your money’s worth.

“You do it,” he says, pressing a condom into her hand.

She takes it, but she has to touch him bare skin to bare skin before she puts it on him. She’s seen him naked before, and he’s seen her, but it wasn’t like this. Now there’s nothing unresolved in the water, he’s not backing off – he’s arching into her caress, breath hitching, eyes hot and half closed.

He groans, “ _Sophie...”_ when she wraps her hand around his cock, and he’s so hard against her palm, skin hot and soft, and she doesn’t want to wait any longer. They’re married (God, they’re _married!_ ), there’s time to take their time later. This feels more like sealing a deal, the old-fashioned way. They won’t be hanging any bloodstained sheets out in the morning, but this is still a moment that will mark _before_ and _after_.

He makes a desperate little broken off noise when she rolls the condom down over his cock, biting his lip, his eyes flickering between her face and her hands like he doesn’t want to miss anything.

As she kneels up and slowly sinks down onto him, he’s looking right into her eyes. His hands tighten on her hips and he shivers helplessly, and Sophie feels – Sophie feels – she’s never come just from this - maybe she’s wired wrong; that second guy said she was _repressed_ – and she isn’t going to now, but _God_ , she can suddenly see how it might work. It’s like she has nerve endings that weren’t there before. She’s acutely aware of the heat of his palms, the strength of his hands, and then inside her, his cock, not moving, just filling her, filling her, until they fit together.

Alex tenses under her, bracing himself to roll them over. He doesn’t do it until she breathes, “Yeah,” and he’s so gentle it’s like he thinks she might break.

He doesn’t start to move right away either. He’s kissing her like a promise, holding himself braced above her as she runs her hands over his shoulders, loving the solid strength of him, everything she could see but not touch before.

Until his balance shifts, and he reaches between them just where their bodies are joined, still watching her face like the answers to the whole world will be in her eyes. She doesn’t know what answers he wants and anyway she can’t hold anything back, doesn’t want to. She gasps and moves her hips to take him in deeper, and those two points, his cock inside her not even moving, and his fingers on her, they’re magnifying each other, she’s never felt her body respond to anybody like this, like he’s discovering secret places that were there in plain sight, and why is this so different, what is he doing to her, she wants it to last, and last, him inside her and touching her, and she’s shaking and crying out and then she’s coming, so hard and so intense there are tears in her eyes, fucking herself on him until he can’t help but move with her, until he’s crying out in turn and clutching at her as he comes, buried deep inside her.

 

He holds her close and kisses her for a long time afterwards. Sophie’s limp and breathless and she feels like she’s _glowing._

Alex’s hair is curling damp over his forehead and she smoothes it back between kisses. He opens his eyes, and for a moment they just gaze at each other across an inch of new sheets, their marriage bed.

“Alex,” she says, and he strokes her hair out of her face in turn and kisses her again.

“Yeah,” he says.

“We got married,” Sophie says, and his face breaks out into a smile like the sun coming out. “We’re married. You’re my _husband_.”

“Yeah. I’m your husband.”

“And I’m your wife.”

“Yeah.”

“And you were right. If we’d done that before we got married, I would have given you the entire ranch, no questions asked. I’m telling you so you don’t abuse this power you appear to have over me…” but he’s giggling before she can finish. “Alex, I’m serious, that was – wasn’t that… I don’t know, you’re amazing, you’re wonderful…”

He cuts her off with kisses.

“I love you,” he murmurs against her lips, so low she isn’t sure she heard him. But she felt the words. She feels them in the way he touches her, in the way he looks at her, in the way he’s always looked at her.

 

 

The afternoon sun comes slanting through the window as they lie there in the tangled new sheets. It paints a stripe over them both, lighting them up and making the dust in the air dance for them.

“You know that story, the one about Penelope and Ulysses, and her suitors? And their bed that was carved out of a tree?”

He shakes his head against the pillow, rubs his thumb over her knuckles and just watches her, waiting for her to tell him.

“It’s a Greek myth. Ulysses goes off on his quest, and he’s gone so long that everyone thinks he must be dead and comes to try and win the queen’s hand in marriage. But she only wants her husband back.”

“Why’d he go for so long?”

Sophie tries to grasp at the thread of the story, but it’s gone. All she has is this image. The bed, the tree, the husband come home.

“I can’t remember,” she admits. “She thinks he’s dead too, but she doesn’t want anyone else. So she tells them she’ll remarry when she’s finished her embroidery – that’s all she had to do, while he was gone, embroidery, no wonder she wanted him back – but she unpicks it every night so it’ll never be finished…”

Why is she telling him this? For a second she feels foolish: is she showing off for him? But this cabin and this bed, that was what it made her think of. She doesn’t want to start off censoring herself - for fear of what? Offending him?

“But he comes back,” Alex prompts.

“Yeah. He comes back, and he’s been away so long she doesn’t recognise him. So to test him, she says, ok then, since you’re my husband, you’ll want them to bring out our marriage bed…”

Alex is smiling now, and she’s suddenly elated, her heart soaring like the sunlight. He gets it, he knows why she’s telling him this.

“So Ulysses says, who cut down the tree? Why did you cut down the tree? Because he’d carved it himself, out of a living tree and then they built a palace around it or something. So she knows it’s him, because what other man would know about their marriage bed?”

“And they lived happily ever after?” Alex asks.

“Yeah. I think so. They go to bed and live happily ever after.”

Alex rolls over, leans up on one elbow so he can look down at her.

“I could carve you a bed, if you want.”

“I bet you could,” she runs her hands over him, everywhere she can reach. Of course he could carve a bed. He could do anything, Sophie thinks. His arms and face are brown from the sun, the rest of him pale. The farmer’s tan city folks laugh at. Sophie’s spent months working alongside him though: she’s on the way to her own farmer’s tan. They match. And she’s seen everything he does, his quiet competence with animal and machine keeping everything running. Nothing about that is laughable.

“Take me a while to build a palace around it, though.”

“No, that’s ok,” Sophie smiles, ghosting her fingers over his chest and watching him arch towards her touch. “We’ve got a ranch and we’ve got that tractor, and a horse you gave to Benny - what would we want a palace for?”

“Bet they’re hell to heat in winter,” he agrees.

“Oh, now you’re thinking about me and the price of fuel! That’s a step up from cattle.”

He rolls down again, covering her body with his; and then rolls them again, so that she’s on top of him.

“Sophie,” he breathes, low and urgent. And she knows what he’s saying. He’s saying, _no I’m not. I’m just thinking about you. I’m thinking about everything we’re going to do together, and what we need to be able to do it. I’m thinking that I love you, and I want to make love again._

 

They will tell each other about their past lovers, later. It matters, it’s part of knowing somebody: it’s part of trusting them. But it’s the past. The future is the ranch, and the marriage bed, and the tractor, and the price of fuel in winter. It’s knowing what you did on your wedding night, and how long it will take to turn a profit from a herd of Friesians. It’s two pairs of boots on the porch and someone to steady you as you take them off. And today, the future is this bed, in this cabin, just Alex and Sophie, starting out.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Seascribe promises me this story isn't too sentimental. I am not so sure. Maybe I will balance it out with some filthy porn about all the sex they have on the tractor/in the fields/behind the barn/after he has finished doing all the ranch chores involving rope which Sophie comes up with. Because if ever a film cried out for unrepentant filthy porn, it's this one.


End file.
